K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

Know your options

Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

Ever hear of Agave?

It’s a very nifty little program, and one that comes in very handy for anyone who’s a themer or likes to arrange colors for whatever purpose. I find it very attractive, just as a program that fits one of my requirements by doing only one thing and doing it well.

On the other hand, it trips up on another category — it’s a program so deeply mired in Gnome dependencies that I almost never install it. I really wish there was a version that didn’t require so much gunk because it’s a delightful program just to tinker with.

Lucky for me, I have the option of Internet-based utilities that can do the same thing. Here‘s a fun little toy:

I don’t know much about the tools offered by that company, or even if it’s a reliable or trustworthy site, but I use that page quite a bit when I’m tweaking my desktop colors in Openbox. It does almost everything Agave does (and sometimes, does a little more really), and is easy to manage and control. Best of all, I can get the same job done without installing half of Gnome, just to find out what colors go well with #3465a4.

Of course, unless you’re online there’s not a lot you can do to access that (maybe save the page offline and hope it works?). And yes, I suppose the weight of that page will require a browser with certain abilities. But for me, even on a 450Mhz machine using Gecko it’s not too much of a drag.

I guess the lesson here is just to remember that if there’s a program that can do something that you enjoy, but there’s a web-based version that will do the same job, consider it as an option. I’d much rather access that color selection page online than burden an entire machine with all that Gnome crud. It just makes more sense to me.

And now, as a final reward, here’s another one you can add to your bookmarks: JaC64.com. Now you can play California Games without compiling VICE … so long as you have Java installed. :P Enjoy! :mrgreen: